From You to Me

by K. A. Holt

  “Do you really think Mr. Plunkett can fix this?” Darby asked as we headed down Nugent Avenue. She had worried eyes—big and round and kind of saggy in the corners.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Probably all we have to do is point out the blunder to him,” I said. “I’m sure it’s only a misunderstanding.”

  “It better be,” Dawn said. Her eyes, unlike Darby’s, were grouchy.

  “Dawn,” Lily said. She also caught Dawn’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “You know, you’ll get much better results if you remain polite and diplomatic. You want to show them how mature you are—that you’re the kind of students who should be allowed in Color Guard.”

  Lily was eleven years old when we were born, so she’s kind of like another parent to us—but the kind that lets you get four cookies instead of three and cries in the theater with you when the movie is sad. Plus, she’s real good at scolding us without making it seem like she’s scolding.

  “I promise we’ll be polite,” Dawn said.

  “Good.”

  Soon Lily was pulling into the parking lot of our middle school. “Head on home when you’re done so Mom won’t worry. Or call her,” she said. “And good luck!”

  We thanked Lily, jumped out of the car, and marched toward the entrance. Dawn was leading the way with that purposeful firstborn stride of hers, while Darby and I lagged behind, glancing around at the familiar surroundings. Schools always look so different when it’s summertime. Kind of deserted and lonely, like an empty piecrust. I said this to Darby and she agreed. “The school will be happier when we’re all back,” she said, and patted the flagpole as we went past.

  “It’s probably best if I do the talking,” Dawn told us as we pushed through the doors and walked down the corridor toward the main office.

  “Do we have a plan?” I asked her.

  “It should be simple,” she said. “We’ll just show them the evidence and they’ll admit they messed up. Then we graciously accept their apology and move on.”

  We weren’t the first ones there. Two other kids were already sitting with their parents in chairs lined up in the hallway. Keeping Lily’s advice in mind, we took three seats and waited patiently. Well, at least Dawn and Darby did. After a couple of moments, I didn’t want to sit any longer and started wandering the halls, trying to peek into the dark classrooms. I spied Mrs. Gillespie, my science teacher from last year, setting up a bulletin board in her room, and Mr. Langerham, my old math teacher, organizing his supply cabinet. It’s funny seeing teachers in shorts and T-shirts. There’s just something wrong about it—like having the president of the United States make a speech in pajamas. Eventually I heard Dawn calling out for me, and it was our turn to meet with the counselor.

  Mr. Plunkett was about our dad’s age. Unlike our dad, he had hair on the top of his head and wore gold wire-rimmed glasses that he was always taking off and putting back on.

  I couldn’t say that we liked Mr. Plunkett, but we didn’t dislike him, either. We knew he was important in the school, but thought about him the same way we thought about the doorknobs—by which I mean hardly ever. Plus, Mr. Plunkett had one of those blank faces that didn’t really smile or frown, so it was hard to know what to make of him.

  When we walked into his office, he turned away from his computer and looked at the three of us standing in a row on the other side of his desk.

  “How can I help you?” he asked, taking off his glasses.

  Darby and I glanced over at Dawn. She’s almost always the one who talks to the grown-ups for us. Mainly because she thinks she is one.

  “Hello. We’re Dawn, Darby, and Delaney Brewster. Thank you for seeing us,” she said. Her voice was all sticky-sweet, like the lady on the Honeysuckle Honey commercial.

  “Yes? What seems to be the matter?” Mr. Plunkett asked.

  “Uh … well …” Dawn cleared her throat and took a deep breath. I could tell she was trying hard not to get riled. “We received our schedules in the mail today, and it appears that they are all … botched up.”

  Mr. Plunkett’s eyebrows rose up under his hair. “How so?”

  “Well, first off, we always have most of our classes together. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how we like it. But for some reason, that’s not the case this time. This year we’re all separated.”

  “That is true,” he said, nodding.

  Dawn tilted her head. “You know about this?”

  “Yes, I was the one who created your schedules.”

  “Well then.” Dawn seemed confused. “I do appreciate your coming right out and admitting your mistake, but if you could just—”

  “There was no mistake,” he said.

  Dawn, Darby, and I traded shocked glances.

  “But why?” I asked him. “Why would you want to bust up a happy family?”

  Mr. Plunkett put his glasses back on. “I am not trying to hurt your family, I assure you. Studies show that siblings do best when they are separated. Our school was too small and just didn’t have enough teachers to put all three of you in different classes. But this year we’ve expanded enough that we can.”

  “But we’ve been doing great so far.” Dawn opened her arms to gesture at all three of us. “Look at the results. We’re highly intelligent, responsible, and … and …”

  “Polite,” Darby added.

  “And clean,” I added.

  “Yes,” Mr. Plunkett said. “You three are model students.”

  “Then why separate us? Why mess with something that isn’t broken?” Dawn’s talking was high and fast, like a squirrel’s. She seemed to realize she was losing her grown-up disguise and paused to take a breath. “The thing is,” she added more calmly, “we just always go together. Like a team.”

  “I understand,” Mr. Plunkett said. I thought he might bristle at Dawn’s complaining, but he didn’t sound upset at all. In fact, his face looked softer—as if he were smiling without a smile. “However, I’m afraid that the decision has been made,” he went on, “and I think you three should give it an honest try. If by midyear you still feel it’s a big mistake, we can meet and discuss other options. But give it a chance. That’s fair of us to ask, isn’t it?”

  Darby nodded sadly. She’s all about being fair—even if it means we don’t get our way. It can be annoying, but it’s also what will make her a great chief justice of the Supreme Court someday. Dawn scowled, but didn’t say anything further. I think she knew Mr. Plunkett was being reasonable and felt she couldn’t argue with him. Or she hadn’t thought of a good opposing theory yet.

  Meanwhile I just wiggled my toes nervously inside my sneakers. Even though I thought he was making a good point, it was still weird and scary to think of us being in different classes all day long.

  “Well then, it sounds like we have an agreement.” This time, an actual smile appeared on Mr. Plunkett’s face.

  “I guess. For now anyway,” Dawn said with an exasperated sigh. “But we’ve got another problem. You put us in Cheer Squad when we didn’t even sign up for it.” She held up our schedules in her right hand.

  “It’s true,” Darby said in a quiet voice. “We signed up for Color Guard.”

  “Yeah!” I said, bouncing even higher on my toes. “We’ve been practicing and practicing. We’re probably the best ones. Only now we aren’t even going to be doing it. It’s a tragedy for the whole school.”

  Mr. Plunkett was the one to look confused. “Let me see those.” He reached for our schedules and, after glancing at them, typed on his computer for a bit. Then he pulled a light green paper out of a drawer, ran his finger down the middle of it, and set it down on his desk near us. “See here?” he said, tapping the page with his fingertip. “This is a sign-up sheet for the class. And those are your names, right?”

  We all gathered around the paper. Sure enough, our names were there, all in a row. At the very top of the page was a bit of small text:

  Want to lead the Patriots to victory and boost school spirit?
/>   Sign up today to be on Cheer Squad!

  “Wait a minute,” Dawn said. “How did our names get on the Cheer Squad sheet without us realizing it?”

  Darby shrugged.

  I stared hard at the celery-colored form. Something about it seemed familiar. I closed my eyes and tried to remember … Suddenly it came to me.

  “Corny dogs!” I cried. “Remember the last day of sixth grade when they had the booster festival on the school lawn and we wanted corn dogs?”

  Dawn frowned. “Delaney, you’re making no sense. What does that have to do with our schedules?”

  “They had a sign-up sheet at the table with the corn dogs. I figured you had to sign if you wanted to eat, so I added all our names.”

  “Can I see that, please?” Dawn reached for the paper and Mr. Plunkett handed it over. Darby and I leaned in to examine it. “That’s Delaney’s handwriting, all right. Well, what do you know? Foiled by our own sister.”

  “I’m sorry! I was hungry and didn’t read the fine print.”

  “So … we actually did register for Cheer Squad?” Darby mumbled.

  Mr. Plunkett took his glasses off and started cleaning them. “I’m afraid so,” he said, nodding. “In fact, Delaney signed twice.”

  I thought for a moment. “Oh yeah. I went back for second corn dog.”

  “But it’s trickery!” Dawn’s honey voice was gone. Now she was in full-on angry squirrel mode. “Those charlatans lured us with deep-fried goodness! Isn’t that grounds for a schedule change?”

  “I understand it was unintentional, but Color Guard is completely full. I could get you into other elective classes, though.” Mr. Plunkett put his glasses back on and started typing at the computer again. “Let’s see … One of you could join choir, another could …”

  “Can’t you put all three of us into another class?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” he said, glancing back up at us. He really did look sorry. “None of them have three openings, so I’m afraid not.”

  “What do we do now?” Darby asked, turning about to face Dawn and me.

  “Cheer Squad is the only class we have together,” I pointed out.

  Dawn scowled. “I don’t want to take Cheer Squad, but I like the idea of us having zero classes together even less.”

  “Same here,” I said.

  Darby nodded.

  “I guess it’s unanimous.” Dawn looked defeated—a rare and worrisome sight. “Mr. Plunkett, we’ve officially voted to stay in Cheer Squad until you can get all of us into Color Guard. Although I will be checking with you pretty regularly to see if there are any changes.”

  “I understand, and I admire you girls for being willing to give it a try.” Mr. Plunkett did that thing again where his eyes smiled even though his mouth didn’t. “I feel confident that each of you will do well regardless. And remember, if you ever want to come by and talk to me about this, my door is always open.”

  “You might need to get another chair,” I said, glancing around.

  “No, I meant you in the singular. I would want to talk with you one-on-one.”

  I noticed the perplexed looks on Dawn’s and Darby’s faces and knew they felt the same way I did—that the thought of having a meeting without our other sisters around was too weird to comprehend. Why was the school so determined to break us up?

  “Thanks for being open-minded.” Mr. Plunkett put his glasses back on. “I have other students to see, so let’s end it here.”

  We mumbled our sad-sounding good-byes and filed out of his office, all slumpy and defeated.

  “This is not how I thought our seventh grade would start,” I grumbled as we trudged down the echoey hallway toward the exit.

  “Me either,” Dawn said.

  “At least we tried our best,” Darby said. “We just have to accept it and move on.”

  “Maybe not.” Dawn stopped in the middle of the corridor and gazed into the distance.

  I recognized the expression on her face. That ten-mile stare … Her eyebrows pushing together over her nose … Her index finger tapping against the side of her chin … Yep, she was formulating plans, all right. And her plans usually involved all three of us—and possibly shenanigans.

  Summer fun was officially over.

  Writing a book is such an interesting phenomenon. You’re alone for much of the process, but you’re also surrounded by the characters you’ve created. You technically spend your days by yourself—but having conversations and arguments, solving problems and going on adventures, making discoveries and amends. And then … your story is done. You turn it in to your editor and your brain is quiet and alone again. Except, you’re not alone. There’s a whole team who springs to life to bring your book to readers. Agents, editors, designers, copy editors, marketing whizzes, public relations teams, and more. But while they’re all working you’re … by yourself. Your characters have been whisked away and you no longer visit their towns and adventures every day, because everything is off being polished and perfected.

  All this to say, being a writer is not an easy job. It’s arguably one of the best jobs in the world, but it’s hard. And when you have a hard, sometimes lonely, job you have to learn to trust other people to help you out. Some of the people who help me every day are Samuel and Georgia and Isaac. They know that I sometimes have to live in my head and in my heart, and that means dinner might be late or burned. The school field trip might be missed. They know I will have to leave them sometimes so I can visit other children and talk about my books. They know this, but they don’t complain. (Well, sometimes they complain, but mostly about my terrible cooking.) My kids are my confidants, my beta readers, my support staff, my champions, and my heart. I love them dearly, and I’m not sure they always realize they are the top notch number one most important team members in getting all of my books written and published.

  It’s also imperative, when you’re a writer, to have a whip-smart publishing team who seems to miraculously know how to get things just right. From editing to design to marketing to everything in between, I could not be luckier to be working with the team at Scholastic. Erin Black seems to live in my brain. Sometimes I think she sees my words before I do. (I hope she does, because when we’re on the phone talking about a project, I get so excited I talk right over her and I have to depend on magic for her to understand me.) Melissa Schirmer is a brilliant production editor, keeping everything in line and in tip-top shape, and Baily Crawford has reached into my heart and created a design that can’t be surpassed.

  My agent, Ammi-Joan Paquette, deserves confetti cannons and jubilant trombone salutes for all of her hard work. She never asks “why” and always asks “why not,” which keeps me constantly on my toes. Joan gives me confidence, which gives me freedom to write. Joan also gives me brutal truth, which gives me freedom to write better.

  And to Shannon, my love. You are my stars and sunshine, my first thought every morning and my last thought every night. You believe in me, and that makes me believe in me. Every day I wonder where you came from. Maybe science can’t prove fate, but maybe it doesn’t need to.

  Kari Anne Holt is the author of several books for young readers, including House Arrest and Rhyme Schemer, each of which was a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, and Gnome-a-Geddon. Dreaming up sandwiches with punny names and barbeque sauces she’d like to try are just a couple of her hobbies. Kari Anne lives in Austin, Texas, with her family, and you can find her online at www.KAHolt.com.

  Copyright © 2018 by K. A. Holt

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used f
ictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Holt, K. A., author.

  Title: From you to me / K.A. Holt.

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Scholastic Press, 2018. | Summary: On the first day of eighth grade Amelia finds a letter that her older sister Clara wrote to herself before she drowned, and it contains a list of the things Clara planned to do in her own eighth grade year—so Amelia, with the help of her best friend Taylor, resolves to complete the list, in the hope that it will bring some closure and ease her still raw emotions.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017042922 (print) | LCCN 2017047166 (ebook) | ISBN 9781338193312 | ISBN 9781338193305 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781338193329 (pbk.)

  Subjects: LCSH: Bereavement—Juvenile fiction. | Grief—Juvenile fiction. | Sisters—Juvenile fiction. | Families—Juvenile fiction. | Best friends—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Grief—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.H7402 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.H7402 Fr 2018 (print) | DDC 813.6

  [Fic] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042922

  First edition, June 2018

  Jacket photos ©: center: Sergey Mostovoy/Dreamstime; clouds: Polina Nefidova/Shutterstock; stars: a-ts/Alamy Images; back cover paper: spxChrome/iStockphoto

  Jacket design by Baily Crawford

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-19331-2

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.